


Sempiternal

by ArtemSoma



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 13:55:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12434259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemSoma/pseuds/ArtemSoma
Summary: I considered what it might be like to exist in the mind of Haggar during Zarkon's recovery period in Season 3. I imagine she's a very shrewd but despondent person during that time, and with a mind as ancient and powerful as hers...it must be quite vivid most of the time. What does she spend her time thinking about?





	Sempiternal

Sempiternal.

Like it had done before, so many times before, the world began to slow around her. The word clung to her mind as a fog on a city, shrouding the whole sky and even the lights below. Where she stood she would have seen mountains of steel gleaming with power, and a sky written in a way that never unfamiliar, but never quite the same. Over time she would begin to understand constellations again as she rearranged them in her vast mind, playing with their positions across the great cosmos before finally coming back to understand where she was, and where she had been.

The officer to her right relayed news erratically, following her about the ship. She was the absolute pinnacle of Galra customs and beliefs. Fearless. Tireless. Ruthless. Her mind impressed itself upon the essence of the officer. She had a distaste for the druids, embellished by her stiff demeanor and elevated blood pressure in Haggar’s presence. There were marks of glory in subtle places about her armor, carved by hand to commemorate some manner of personal triumph. A vanity so base and so pure she could mold it into a glorious and chaotic power given just a short time. Haggar’s mind considered how to take this vitriolic and hungry soul besides her and create a fine display power.

Power. Power is Sempiternal.

The thought was haunting somehow, and her mind raced to understand its’ significance. There was another memory below the surface, a bubble that could, and would, burst at any moment.

“Silence.” Haggar said abruptly. “Do not disturb me.”

The officer, despite all the cruelties she had accomplished, recoiled. It was but a half-second of muscles taught and fraught with anxiety, the raw instant in which the officer knew that she, despite all her uncountable victories and strength, could be instantly extinguished as easily a fly before Haggar.

“M-my sincerest apologies! I merely sought to update you!” she stammered out quickly. Haggar’s eyes narrowed, thinking about any past infractions the officer had of note. Was there any flaw in her record? Some festering wound she could reach into and pry open? Something that could hone her mind for her purpose. Perhaps...even something to let drink of true power? 

No. Voltron had come to grow too strong for brutish beasts. The problem had been allowed to escalate from minor inconvenience to something much more demanding. The solutions in the foreseeable future lay in far more elegant solutions.

Voltron could deflect entire fleets. Perhaps one might chance itself lucky and triumph. Perhaps Lotor is scheming something to deal with them with certainty. Absolutely none of it was worth consideration. The only thing that would matter is the results, and she would bring them to bear.

“You bring nothing new of note.” Haggar said, “Continue as instructed prior.” And this time she did turn, her eyes piercing into the officer. “Do. Not. Disturb me.”

Silence. Haggar felt the world speed up again, and the city in her mind began to vanish.

She growled, and without another pause resumed her walk, but try as she might the word would not return to her mind. The sheer irritation of it send a pulsing wave of anger through her form. The dull-witted galra officer had completely destroyed her thought process.

Dull.

The word reverberated through her mind. She stood at the top of a podium, aloft in the grandest of gatherings beneath a thundering purple sky. Banners flew high and mighty and proud above her head, and the faces, indistinct and mindless blurs, stared expectantly. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands of bodies and minds bowing to her power. She was being celebrated.

No. She was being revered. A snarl of contempt for their pathetic flattery traced her lips.

What had this place been before, she wondered? This chamber in her mind was not always like this. She knew that. She just couldn’t remember it. The people below perhaps even had some significance at one point as well.

When she looked up her eyes met swirling masses of gas and steaming clouds of thunderous rage. Those gleaming suns poured down onto her form. The masses beneath scorched and flamed, but her eyes filled with the light and she could feel something.

Something warm.

A thundering voice, deep as the cosmos spoke then in the chamber of her mind.

The words blasted apart the fields of men below, raising fire and brimstone with each bolt of lightning that hammered the earth. But she could not make them out. Then she understood – they were not meant for her.

The words were meant for them.

She looked up, and saw it in the eyes above again. The gleaming power and raw ambition. The warmth.

Oh the warmth.

For one split moment, the warmth filled her body. Her soul sparked with something, shining a light on something old. Disparity came to Haggar’s mind for one brief instant, and this time the words reached her ears with overwhelming ferocity.

‘Sempiternal,’ it said.

Lightning struck. Haggar’s mind flashed vividly, and amidst a thunderous echo of chaos and lust the warmth was gone. Even the memory of it quickly evaporated into a nothingness so pervasive she found it fascinating. But that was not where she was again now. She was back in the city, in the fog, looking at the constellations and thinking, wondering, yearning.

The bubble had grown. It’s surface rippled with barely concealed fragility. It hovered before her, and she reached out to it, unerringly determined to uncover what it held.

“Sempiternal.” the voice echoed from somewhere beyond time itself, and she could feel a wretched pain in her where she had made sure nothing should be. Her fingers delicately reached out and touched the bubble, uncharacteristically and unintentionally gentle, she realized. Something was wrong.

The instant her finger touched the surface of the bubble, connecting with the distorted double of her own form, the world transformed. Like a star exploding, the transition was abrupt and spectacularly devastating. Fog became freezing rain, the sky rumbled softly. It rumbled, she noted – not thundered. There was a difference, and she knew that, but she couldn’t remember what it meant.

“Sempiternal.” said Zarkon.

Honerva turned around, drenched in the rain and and exploding with glee. She shook her head and screamed out.

“What did you say?” she said enthusiastically.

“I have struggled...” Zarkon began, the paladin’s posture unusually stiff and yielding, eyes like gentle suns reaching into her soul and extracting a well of pure decadence. True ambrosia this was, she thought. “...to find the right words to describe you, but even as I rummage my admittedly less exceptional mind...”

“Are you trying to flatter me?” Honerva said gleefully. She was blushing scarlet of course, unfazed by the rain. She had been of course the one that had insisted upon coming up here, afterall, and the poor man was finally making good on his promises. She would let him squirm a bit, see where he would trip over himself, before moving in and devouring him whole. “You know, flattery will get you flattened.” she added ominously.

“You are just...so Galra.” Zarkon said, a smile like a child seeing the sunrise for the first time sheepishly crossing his face. “But, also...well...I’m afraid I am just not as good with words as you alteans.”

“Zarkling, my dear, please…” Honerva said, “We really shouldn’t be wasting too much time afterall. I’ve got much to do. And you’ve got an entire galactic alliance to maintain. Or are you...getting lax again?”

“Never!” Zarkon said, straightening himself and puffing out his chest – proud and defiant. He stared her down with a stern fury, but even then his feelings inevitably betrayed him, and a smile so radiant it scorched her heart crossed his lips.

“Absolutely divine.” she muttered, taking a tantalizing step towards Zarkon.

“Pardon?”

“Well, you know, if you’re going to use such a strong word as...sempiternal.” she chortled as she repeated it. “No, you know what, that’s just so you to find such a pompous term of endearment.”

“P-pompous?!” Zarkon was aghast, and his hands raised themselves – almost pleadingly – as he scrambled for excuses in his brain. “T-that is not what I meant! I thought it was a majestic way to...describe...you…?” he continued uncertainly, waiting for some cue. Oh he was struggling alright. Right where she wanted him. Time to close the trap.

“Of course, I never said I didn’t approve.” she said coyly, taking a few more steps forward and with a grand smirk put her hands on his and moved into his warmth. Even in the cold chaos of the thunderstorm he was still always there like a lighthouse, ready and waiting for her to come to him. “I simply think your usage has a bit more...frivolity to it than is normally considered Galra?”

“Perhaps so.” Zarkon acquiesced, uncertain of what to do besides drawing his hands close around Honerva and resting his head on hers. “Good heavens, are you not cold?”

“I don’t feel that way around you.”

“No but...” Zarkon continued, “...really, how?”

“C’mon dear, don’t ruin the moment.” Honerva said with a giggle.

“It would not do to have you become ill!”

“You worry too much.”

“I...” Zarkon, finally, relented, “...is it an altean thing to say that? Alfor is much the same way.”

“Zarkon, hush now.” Honerva said, closing her eyes and resting her head against him. “Let me bask in your warmth for just a bit.”

“...very well.”

A few moments of silence passed, the embrace sweet and, in the midst of all the world’s relentless downpour, rapturous.

“...power.” Honerva finally said.

“Power?” Zarkon repeated quietly.

“This warmth...this is your power. And to me what seems to reach into infinity, more than anything else I have ever known, is that.”

“I...see.”

“Power...is Sempiternal.” Honerva said quietly, “It’s very Galra now, no?” she added playfully.

“...agreed.” Zarkon said simply. “It’s not a very good way to address you however.”

“Just wife will do, husband.”

The glass illusion shattered. Haggar’s mind returned to the present. She was standing in Zarkon’s chamber again. She could not quite recall when she arrived, nor how long she had been in here.

“Again.” she muttered to herself, thoughtfully. “Sempiternal.”

Her eyes observed the still form of the Emperor of all Galra, her husband, and the words echoed in her mind, a hand reaching down longingly and unwittingly to the man she had so shared her life with.

Power is sempiternal.


End file.
